


a message of feathers and bone

by glundergun (cleardishwashers)



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Dissociation, Episode: s12e10 Dennis' Double Life, M/M, punching holes in television sets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-16 13:24:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21036941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cleardishwashers/pseuds/glundergun
Summary: dennis manages to make it work in north dakota for two months.title from the raven by sam tinnesz





	a message of feathers and bone

Mandy has the grace to look surprised when he shows up, but she lets him in anyways, and she tells him to put his bags in the guest room. By the end of the month, he still hasn’t unpacked. Six weeks later, the only thing hung up in the closet is a suit he bought so he could get some bullshit corporate job, and two months later, the suit is gone— apparently, threatening to staple someone’s hand through a desk isn’t  _ appropriate workplace behavior. _

If he thought it was shitty in the Philly suburbs, North Dakota is a thousand times worse. It’s barren and cold, and it has Mandy, nosy Mandy, who can’t keep her thoughts to herself and tells Dennis that  _ “y’know, it seems like you miss them a lot, especially that Mac fella— were you really lying about being emotionally involved with him?” _ And when Dennis goes back to the same bar for the sixteenth time in the four days after Mandy drops that goddamn  _ bombshell, _ the bartender actually asks him if he’s  _ okay _ instead of just fucking serving him drinks, and Dennis snaps.

“Fuck  _ off,” _ Dennis exclaims, slamming his palms down on the bar. “I’m fine. I’m  _ better _ than fine, actually, because I am the  _ Golden God, _ not some piece of white trash from the fucking sticks—”

“Sir, do you need me to call a doctor? How much have you had to drink today?”

“Oh, you  _ buffoon,” _ Dennis sneers, “you don’t have a  _ fraction _ of the worth— you know what? I’m going to take my considerable business to another establishment, because  _ obviously _ you don’t understand the subtleties of life.”

“The only other bar in town shut down, sir.”

Of course. Of  _ course. _ Why the hell would there need to be more than one bar in this shithole?

He goes back to the house, tells Mandy that he’s moving to Fargo and that he’ll be back on the weekends, and then he gets on a train. He regrets not saying goodbye to Brian Jr. He regrets a lot of things.

Neither his regrets nor his fellow passengers stop him from smoking on the train, and he makes his way through half a pack of Lucky Strikes before he gets off. He checks his pocket, makes sure that the platinum card snatched from Frank’s wallet is still there, and he walks down the sidewalk for miles until he comes upon a hotel. People on the street avoid him, parting like the sea parted before Moses.  _ Good. _ They’re not worthy, not even close—

“So that’ll be just a single, then?” the girl at the counter says, and she’s  _ judging _ him, he  _ knows _ she is, and he clenches his hands into fists.

“What is that supposed to mean?” he asks her, acid dripping from his words, his voice shaking with barely restrained anger.

“It means I want to know what room key to give you,” she says, her tone riddled with sarcasm— fucking  _ Christ, _ another person unworthy of even breathing the same  _ air _ as him— “Here you go, sir. Have a nice stay.”

“What the fuck would you know about it?” Dennis hisses, and she doesn’t even give him an answer, just raises her eyebrows and then goes back to her book. Fucking  _ bitch. _ He’s not even going to bother hitting on her, because she’s probably infected with all manner of diseases, and the Golden God doesn’t get diseases because then he’d have to go down to the free clinic and then sleep with women named Janice or Kelley with an  _ e _ who end up giving him the exact same disease he was just cured of— after all, they had been behind him in the line.

He snatches the room key off the counter. He doesn’t know how he gets to his room, all he knows is that the place  _ reeks _ of mildew, like the place they’d stayed in when they’d gone back to the Jersey Shore and Dee had her hair ripped out of her skull and Charlie had wanted to swim to Europe and Mac was still laboring under the illusion that he was straight. “Goddamnit,” he says. He puts his bags down on the shelf and watches a small cloud of dust blossom, tries to turn on the shitty TV and only gets static. “Fucking  _ Christ.” _

There are four things that he’d left in Philly that he wonders if he should’ve taken with him.  _ One— _ a framed photo of him and Mac unpacking their boxes in the then-new apartment, taken by Charlie, who’d just fished a camera out of a trash can and refused to stop photographing shit for the entire weekend. After Charlie had left, saying something about alley cats and beer, he and Mac had gotten high and fallen asleep in a tangled mess of not-quite-teenage limbs. That was before any of them had  _ really _ realized that Mac was gay, and it wasn’t weird for Dennis to touch him, and now, if he  _ did _ touch Mac, then Mac would undoubtedly catch feelings for him, like you’d catch a cold. He misses touching Mac, misses being able to do that without his heart jumping up into his throat because  _ he might actually like you, Dennis. _ Goddamn Mac.  _ Two— _ his Chardee Macdennis figurine. He and Dee had spent hours laboring over them, poring over photo books to find a picture where their heads were exactly the right size to tape over the doll. He doesn’t want fucking  _ Frank _ to use his figurine or something, if the rest of the Gang does decide to play again.  _ Three— _ his Nightman costume, because he’d accidentally jizzed on it, and Mac definitely knew about it, and if any broad came by the bar needing a DNA test then Mac would undoubtedly suggest getting a sample from the fabric.  _ Four— _ the orange bottle that was sitting on the counter when he left, freshly filled with little white pills, courtesy of Mac. This is the one he’s most unsure about. The pills had dulled the sharp edges of his thoughts so they didn’t stab into his mind and his heart and his skin, but he left to start a  _ family. _ That’s something a person who’s been  _ cured _ would do. He doesn’t  _ need _ the pills, and since Mac was usually the one who would fill his prescription, he doesn’t need Mac either. He doesn’t need any of them.

His hands are trembling by his sides, and he doesn’t know  _ why, _ so he puts his right fist through the television. It’s not like the hunk of junk was doing anything, anyways. He withdraws his hand, and even though there’s pieces of glass stuck in his skin, he can’t feel anything. Mac would make him clean it up anyways.

Mac isn’t here. He doesn’t need Mac.

He pulls out the shitty burner phone that he bought to replace the one he threw out of Mandy’s car on the way to an Applebees, and he contemplates calling Mac anyways, just to find out what’s going on with everyone back in Philly, and then—  _ oh. _

He’d thrown his phone out onto the highway because Mac had texted him a ridiculously long and sappy message, one that Dennis couldn’t even read halfway before wanting to gag. Goddamnit.

The ringing of his phone alerts him to the fact that he’s dialled a number, and when he looks down, he realizes that it’s  _ Dee’s _ number. Panic flares in his chest as he tries to figure out what to do because there is no  _ way _ he wants to talk to his idiot sister— “Who is this?” she asks, her voice crackling through the low-quality speakers.

“Is that Dennis?” someone asks in the background, and Dennis  _ knows _ it’s Mac, even with the shitty techno music blaring. His stomach turns, and he can hear Mac in his head, asking when he last ate.

“I don’t know, dipshit, all it says is that it’s a North Dakota number!” Dee calls. “Dennis, that you?”

“Yeah. What do you want?” His voice comes out flatter than he’d envisioned.

_ “You’re _ the one who called  _ me, _ assbag,” Dee says.

“Oh.”

“Lemme talk to him!” Mac calls, barely audible over the pumping bass.

“Shut up!” Dee replies. “Dennis, you don’t sound great.”

“What?” Dennis asks. “Dee, I am living my best life. I’m no longer weighed down by you, or Mac, or Charlie or Frank or—”

“Yeah? What about your baby mama?” Dee asks, and he can hear her smug smile through the line. “You ran out on them, huh?”

“I didn’t fucking  _ run out _ on them—”

“Yeah, you did. Why’d you call?”

“Where the hell even  _ are _ you?” Dennis asks, partly because he genuinely wants to know and partly because he doesn’t have a single good reason for picking up the phone after two months.

“The Rainbow.  _ Why’d you call, _ douchewad?”

“I just— there’s this balm that Mac uses on cuts, and I forget what brand it is.”

He hears the sounds of a scuffle, hears Dee swearing and Mac calling her a bird, and then— “Dennis? It’s Mac.”

He wants to say something— maybe  _ I know who you are, idiot _ or  _ how’ve you been? _ or  _ what the hell did you mean in that text, Mac, were you serious— _

He hangs up the phone, and he looks down at his bloody hand again. It’s starting to drip onto the carpet. He still feels absolutely nothing, nothing at all except for the way his heart and stomach and soul are all tied up into more knots than he can bear to untangle. He throws the phone down on the ground and grinds the cracked glass under his heel until it’s a mess of exposed wiring and cheap plastic parts, taking extra care to smash the SIM card, just in case Future Him gets drunk and tries to do something he’ll regret.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! drop me a line at @glundergun on tumblr :)


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